The settlement preferences of Scandinavian emigrants to the United States, 1850–1960

Abstract

In the past, text books have made a false distinction between the former agrarian structure of Denmark on the one hand and of the remaining Scandinavian countries on the other. The proper dividing line should intersect the kingdom of Sweden, since farmers in Norrland and Finland were peasant-proprietors at the opening of the modern age while elsewhere in Scandinavia they were generally tenants. Much of the land not owned by peasants belonged to the Crown or the churchy but neither of them practised large-scale farming save in exceptional instances. Thus it is of crucial importance to establish at the outset the extent of landownership by the nobility and by other ‘persons of standing’ (stõndspersoner) about 1600 and how this changed during the century. In Sweden noble landownership is defined to include even land held by feudal right (donationer) and freehold or crown land for which a noble has bought or been given the right to levy taxes (frälseköp). Its status as noble property is not affected by whatever proportion of it may be held as virtual peasant freehold with hereditary rights of use (bördsrätt) and security against eviction and incorporation into the tax-exempt demesne farm (säteri) of the feudal property; such a holding is called skattefräise hemman.     

Estate management and institutional constraints in pre‐industrial England: the ecclesiastical estates of Durham,c. 1400–1640

This article explores how far estate management and institutional constraints help to explain the transformations of rural society in England from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries. The monks of Durham Cathedral Priory and the bishops of Durham faced many of the same exogenous pressures in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries but they responded differently to these challenges. By the seventeenth century all of the dean and chapter's lands were consolidated holdings on 21‐year leases, whereas a confused mixture of copyhold and leasehold land had developed on the bishops' estate. This had a significant impact upon the challenges and opportunities facing their tenants. Institutional constraints were often crucial factors in the transformation of the English countryside: these two neighbouring ecclesiastical estates faced broadly the same problems and yet the composition of their estates diverged significantly across this period, having a profound effect not only on levels of rent, but also on the tenure of holdings and ultimately their relative size; three of the most important factors in the formation of agrarian capitalism. This article also argues that how rural society adapted to the fifteenth‐century recession greatly affected the ability of their sixteenth‐century counterparts to respond to inflation.     

The Danish trading companies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

Abstract

The great trading companies form one of the characteristic features of the economic history of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This is true of Europe generally, and of Denmark in particular. The charter for the first Danish trading company, the East India Company, was issued by king Christian IV on 17 March 1616. And on 21 March 1792, king Christian VII appended his signature to the last company charter, that for the Asiatic Company. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries thus form a well-defined period with regard to the trading companies as far as Denmark is concerned. There were simply no companies prior to 1600. And when the Asiatic Company was wound up in 1843 after a death struggle which had lasted for more than a generation, the last of the companies vanished. But within this 200-year period there had existed at least twenty Danish trading companies - depending on how trading companies are defined and how their founding and reconstruction are interpreted. At all events the number of them is large by European standards. In fact the concentration of companies in Denmark is even more pronounced, for of the twenty companies, eighteen were founded within a period of only 125 years, between 1656 and 1782. A comparison with the concentration of companies in other European countries during this period is not easy. The literature is diffuse, and the problems of classifying the individual companies as solely or predominantly trading companies are great. But there is scarcely any doubt that Denmark would occupy a high position on any comparative list during this 125-year period — and it is not unlikely that this marginal region of the European economy might come highest on the list.     

Manorial economy and corvée labour in southern Sweden 1650–1850*

This essay is an inquiry into manorial production in Scania. Its growth was dependent on the long‐term development of European grain prices. When prices increased landlords were encouraged to put more land under the plough. The estates’ main income came, to an increasing extent, from demesne production, which finally dominated the income profile. The peasants’ most important contribution to the landlords became, in most cases, their corvée labour, and their uncertain tenure rights were illustrated with great clarity in the continuing evictions, which were accelerated in the nineteenth century with the aim of expanding the demesne.     

Denmark in China 1839–65: A pawn in a British game

Abstract

Denmark's trading connections with China date back to the seventeenth century, but it was not until the establishment of Asiatisk Kompagni (the Danish Asiatic Company) in 1732 that they became at all regular. In the period between the Company's foundation and the outbreak of war with England in 1807, 124 ships were sent to China; imported Chinese products were the basis of the trade, and of course the Danish market was too small to absorb such a volume of business. The China trade was therefore primarily a transit trade with Copenhagen as the entrepôt: conditions for this were particularly favourable during periods of war between the European great powers when, by virtue of their neutrality, Danish ships were able to take over a major share in supplying the north-west European market. The war of 1807–14 with England, however, entirely changed both the external political and the internal economic conditions for the continuation of this traffic. Thus the exceptionally large-scale and, by Danish standards, profitable operations of Asiatisk Kompagni in the eighteenth century were emphatically a passing phenomenon produced by the peculiar business conditions of the time.¹     

The transition from tenancy to freehold peasant ownership in Norway

Abstract

Already in the late seventeenth century many tenant farmers in Norway were buying their farms, and it has been held that by about 1750 freeholders were in the majority in the country.     

Landowners and tenants in Norway

Abstract

During the past two decades Norwegian historical research has to a considerable extent been concentrated on problems connected with the peculiar nature of the distribution of landownership in Norway before 1661, in which year the king of Denmark and Norway embarked upon a large-scale selling of Crown lands and secularised ecclesiastical estates. The results of the investigations so far carried out have for the most part been published only in parish or other local histories or in short articles in Norwegian periodicals, especially in Heimen, the organ of Norwegian local historians. It is only quite recently that a more comprehensive work has been published in this field, Halvard Bjørkvik's Jordeige og jordleige i Ryfylke i eldre tid.¹ In the present article I propose first to review this book and then to supplement it with a survey of the results of earlier research.     

The geography of urbanization — Sweden and Finland,c. 1570–1770

Abstract

In this article Swedish urbanization is considered as a long term growth cycle. The urban system expanded both geographically and demographically during the seventeenth century. Many new towns were founded, and urban growth rates were generally high. Swedish urban geography was characterized by peripheral expansion mainly towards northern Sweden. At the same time there was a strong tendency towards the centralization of urban resources. The capital city, Stockholm, evolved from being a medium-sized town to becoming a city worthy of Sweden s great power status. During the eighteenth century several of the seventeenth century trends were reversed: the centralising tendency ended and indeed regressed, while general urban growth slowed down, turning into an ‘urban growth from below’. Stockholm became a stagnation metropolis' and the eastern-central part of Sweden experienced an urban setback relative to western Sweden, where several towns, including Gothenburg, profited from their close connections with the expansive markets of northern and western Europe.     

Denmark-Norway's mercantile marine 1650–1700

Abstract

The aim of this book is to describe the development of the Danish-Norwegian mercantile marine during the second half of the seventeenth century. Jørgen H. P. Barfad has chosen this period partly because sufficient material was available only after about the year 1650 and partly because it was in this period that the foundations of the rapid development of Danish-Norwegian shipping in the eighteenth century were laid.     

The Danish cattle trade during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

Abstract

Danish production and exports of oxen have been the subject of frequent investigation from various points of view. Historians have chiefly tended to stress the social lop-sidedness of the trade and the dependence of these exports on the vicissitudes of the international market. While the dominant political position of the Danish nobles enabled them to monopolize the production of oxen, their economic prosperity depended on the successful maintenance of the exports.¹ Against this interpretation, however, some historians have argued that the cattle production was not only of fundamental importance to Danish agriculture but that it also made a significant contribution to the European supply. According to Erik Arup, oxen provided Denmark in the fifteenth century with an export commodity of high quality, and Astrid Friis has stressed the fundamental importance of oxen exports to the economic development of sixteenthcentury Denmark. Both interpretations, however, maintain that the production and export of oxen provided a solid economic foundation for the aristocratic rule of Denmark.²     

Earldoms and baronies as economic enterprises in seventeenth century Finland

Abstract

In his comprehensive monograph of nearly eight hundred pages, the first volume of which was published as an academic dissertation six years ago, Professor Jokipii has undertaken to give an account of the brief history of Finnish earldoms and baronies. With two exceptions these twenty-nine large-scale fiefs lasted in all only a quarter of a century (the third quarter of the seventeenth century). Nevertheless, they made their mark on the later development of Finland.     

Swedish-Polish trade negotiations at the end of the second world war and their results

Abstract

Commercial relations between Sweden and Poland have been important for many centuries. This was perhaps particularly true at the end of the sixteenth century, when the Swedish king Sigismund was monarch of both Poland and Sweden, and again in the seventeenth century, when successful warmaking enabled Sweden to conquer northern Poland and exploit the wealthy Polish ports to finance a large part of the war costs. Much has come to light concerning the very important trade of this period. Such relations were reestablished during the twentieth century.     

Price formation in the Danish stock market in the 1890s

Abstract

Trading¹ in stocks has a fairly long history in Denmark. It dates back to the end of the 17th century at least, as evidenced by M?glemes Articler from 1684, where one can find information about brokerage fees for sales and purchases of shares of the East Asian, West Asian and other chartered trading companies. In the beginning of the 18th century, newspapers started carrying information about transactions in stocks. Stock exchange price quotes were listed in the newspapers fairly regularly from around 1760.     

The role of the engineer in Danish modernisation, 1850–1920

Abstract

The article attempts to assess the role of engineers in the modernisation of Denmark in the period 1850 to 1920. Using both quantitative and qualitative evidence, it argues that though it is hardly possible in absolute terms to measure the influence of the engineers, it is possible to reach some indicative conclusions.

By looking at the position before 1850 and the periods 1850–1890 and 1890–1920 and using statistics on the employment of the engineers graduating from Polyteknisk Lareanstalt in Copenhagen, it is clear that these professional engineers affected society in a number of ways. The influence of engineers on the growing Danish industry has hitherto been presumed to be only minor. but this view needs some correction. As early as the 1870s and 1880s professional engineers played an important part in the largest Danish industrial firms, and prior to that held important positions in the new, technologically-pioneering, Danish industries. Danish engineers also influenced the State s telegraph service, the railways, gas- and water works, and town planning.

That, too, a considerable number of the early graduates from Polyteknisk: Lcereanstalt worked as teachers had no small importance, as, until some time after the mid nineteenth century, the teaching of the natural sciences in Denmark was sporadic and of uneven quality.     

The economic background to the union of 1707

Abstract

The view that Scotland was in a state of economic stagnation in the seventeenth century, particularly in the years between the Restoration and the Union, is one which has long been held. Once economic and political historians have read Dr. Smout's book, however, this view will no doubt be greatly modified¹.     

Camilla Josephson,Growth and Business Cycles: Swedish Manufacturing Industry 1953–2001

Abstract

Danish historians, like those of other countries, have increasingly devoted their attention in the 20th century to the study of the economic and social aspects of historical evolution, in the belief that these aspects are of fundamental importance to the understanding of political and cultural history—indeed to the deeper understanding of the whole course of history. At present, however, the only complete account of the history of economic life in Denmark is one which appeared in a German series dealing with a number of different European countries. The series included Französische Wirtschaftsgeschichte by Henri Sée, Holländische Wirtschaftsgeschichte by E. Baasch, Norwegische Wirtschaftsgeschichte by O. A. Johnsen, and Allgemeine Wirtschaitsgeschiclite by E. Kulischer.     

Origin and rise of the crofter problem in Finland

Abstract

Crofters (Swedish torpare, Finnish torppari) are in Finland and Sweden the peasants whose principal means of subsistence derived from the cultivation of some small part, held in tenancy, of an estate. The crofter paid the bulk of his rent by putting in so many days work on the parent farm.     

Serfdom in esthonia during the period of Swedish rule

Abstract

For quite some time after World War II peasant behavior in less developed countries was ‘unproblematic’. There was a general consensus that peasants were not ‘economic men’, in the sense that they tried to maximize profits as postulated by mainstream economic theory. Instead, their acts were assumed to be governed by ‘tradition’, or ‘conservatism’, which by and large had nothing to do with the type of maximizing or minimizing behavior which acquired prominence in economic theory not least by the central role that was conferred on it in Paul Samuelson's Foundations of Economic Analysis.¹ Their ambitions and horizons were thought to be limited in such a way as to render standard economic theory inapplicable in the study of peasant behavior. The discussion focused on the ‘inert’, or ‘lazy’, (satisficing) peasant.²     

Red Holocaust

ABSTRACT

Reduced transport costs and income growth in industrialising European countries changed the market conditions for European farmers in the late nineteenth century. Grain prices fell while dairy prices rose. It has been claimed that these price changes hit large grain farmers with vested interests in grain trade particularly hard, while owner-occupiers and smallholders fared better and with help of developing cooperative associations, came out as successful commercial agriculturalists by switching to intensive branches, foremost dairying. Recent research on the Danish case, shows, however, that change was initiated on large elite estates with long-term dairy traditions. The literature on the Swedish case indicates, that larger farms switched to intensified fodder production quicker than smaller farms did, while in the early twentieth century smaller farms played an un-proportionally large role on the dairy market. Using individual farm data from two East-central Swedish parishes in 1878/80, 1895/96 and 1910/11, it is shown, that larger farms tended to modernise crop rotations and switch towards dairy production earlier than small farms did. Smaller farms caught up, and by 1910 their land use was about as strongly adapted to commercial dairy production as larger farms’ land use was.     

Brita Lundström,Grundat 1876: Historia och företagsidentitet inom Ericsson

Abstract

Denmark in the late 1800s experienced drastic urbanisation. According to the 1901 census just on 40 per cent of the steeply rising population lived in the towns, which meant that numbers had doubled in the course of half a century. The capital, Copenhagen, with a population of approximately half a million in 1901, bore the brunt of this but the provincial towns could also show considerable growth. With approximately 50,000 inhabitants, Arhus, the largest town in Jutland by 1380, had by 1901 also become the largest town in the provinces, almost equally as the result of net immigration and of the natural excess of births over deaths.